Amazon Affiliate Lesson #1: You Have To Provide Targeted Value

by on December 21, 2010

I’ve seen a bunch of bad examples of an Amazon affiliate website in the comments on my post about why your Amazon Affiliate website might be sucking wind.  In general, the vast majority of them have the same major problem.  They don’t provide ANY value to a visitor.   People continue to think that they can throw up a crappy shadow of the Amazon site filled with nothing but affiliate links and when they “advertise” it, the cash will start rolling in.

Ummmm, no.

So I’m starting this called “Amazon Affiliate Lessons” to help everyone that might be just starting out with the Amazon affiliate program.   My qualifications?  Click here for my Amazon earnings report.

So lesson #1.  Provide something of value to your site visitor.  It has to be something that they can’t get just from going to Amazon itself.   Do it right and the mighty search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing will send you free traffic that you can then direct towards Amazon.

How do I provide targeted value on my Amazon affiliate sites?  By doing product comparisons around a specific subject.   For example, take vacuum cleaners.  I’m not in the vacuum cleaner space at all, but it’s an example I’ll keep going back to, since there is a shocking amount of money in it.

If you were looking for a small vacuum, what keywords would you look for?  What is the best canister vacuum?  What are the features that make a good canister vacuum?

Go buy a hostname with your keywords in the domain.  Something like canister-vacuum-reviews.com or .net or .org.  Install WordPress on it.  Write a 400 word article about what makes the best canister vacuum.  That’s your main article for your site.  Park that on your front page.  That’s the main focus of your site and your main keyword.

Now write comparison articles to capture some long tail keyword traffic , like “Miele S4212 Neptune vs Miele S2810 Canister: Review and Comparison”, or “Bagless Vacuum Comparison: Hoover Windtunnel vs Dyson Multifloor”.  It doesn’t matter if you don’t know squat about vacuums, just do some research.  Don’t write bullshit, you have to actually sit down and look into it.   Look at reviews on Amazon, Wikipedia, About.com and then write the key points in your own words.

I’m operating under the assumption that you already have a website and know a little bit about editing the content on it.  If you don’t, check back later.  I plan on writing a newbie guide.

Now what’s the best way to put your affiliate links in your article?  Click here to read Amazon Affiliate Lesson #2:  The Best Amazon Affiliate Links.

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

nigel February 4, 2011 at 1:49 pm

when is amazon affiliate lesson3 due out.

suzanne May 14, 2011 at 9:54 am

“NEWBIE’S TO ONLINE MARKETING”
GDAY from both my wife and myself came across your info
Mate this is real Facts…
Yes we have made a few mistakes in our site,as well you can see
it for yourself…Both of us are “NEWBIES”…
WE have been so frustrate How to put this together…
In regards to Targeting Traffic…have no idea what so ever till we
started to read your blog awesome

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